FOSS Force

There are many excellent resources available to teach you how to run an open source project—how to set up the collaboration tools, how to get the community engaged, etc. But there is much less out there about open source strategy; that is, about how to use well-considered open source investments to support an overall mission.read more

I believe I started using Java in 1997, not long after Java 1.1 saw the light of day. Since that time, by and large, I've really enjoyed programming in Java; although I confess these days, I'm as likely to be found writing Groovy scripts as "serious code" in Java.

Coming from a background in FORTRAN, PL/1, Pascal, and finally C, I found a lot of things to like about Java. Java was my first significant hands-on experience with object-oriented programming. By then, I had been programming for about 20 years, and it's probably safe to say I had some ideas about what mattered and what didn't.

Firefox 69.0 is set to be officially released tomorrow but for those eager to upgrade the release binaries have now hit their FTP server.

Firefox 69 isn't the most exciting Mozilla web browser update in recent times but we've found it to at least provide better Linux performance for Firefox both out-of-the-box and when making use of the WebRender code path.

Other changes for Firefox 69.0 are mostly catering to macOS and Windows platform specific changes though one visible alteration is that Adobe Flash content will now always ask users before activating Flash content on a web page.

Since the demise of Geek Feminism and the Ada Initiative, who's supporting efforts to progress women's rights in the open source community? [...]
Continue reading Open Source Feminism: The Unfinished Revolution
The post Open Source Feminism: The Unfinished Revolution appeared first on FOSS Force.

deepin is a Debian-based distribution developed in China. The distro ships with its own desktop environment, also called Deepin, and a dozen or so applications that are developed in-house. To avoid confusion, the distribution is called "deepin" (in all lower case) while the desktop environment's name is "Deepin" (with a capital "D").

The latest version of deepin was released in July and mainly features bug fixes. The most notable new feature is "Cloud Sync", which is an option to store various system settings (everything from the wallpaper to the power settings) in the "cloud". This is an interesting option but it is currently only available for users in mainland China. In other words, there aren't a whole lot of new and exciting features in deepin 15.11. However, as deepin is one of those distros about which there is a lot to say, it is worth having a look at the latest release.

Perhaps you have come across desktop screenshot like the one below in some forums. If you haven’t, try checking this subreddit. You might have wondered how could people make their Linux desktop look so beautiful.

Of course, you can make your own desktop look good by changing the icon, theme and wallpaper but you might still not achieve the same result.

In majority of cases, a tiling window manager is used instead of the regular floating window manager. Ahmm! what’s a tiling window manager? Let me quickly explain it to you.

About a year ago, I reviewed the beta version of Kdenlive 18.08. It proved to be an okay program, an incremental improvement, even though there were some issues that you'd expect to find in beta-quality software. Overall, there weren't any big surprises, but I was hoping for a more streamlined workflow and improved consistency.

Twelve months later, Kdenlive 19.08 has been released, and it's time for another review. After all, this is my favorite video editor, and I've used it to create all of my funny and unfunny Youtube videos, so I'm always very keen on what new things and improvements we can have here. Let us commence then, ever so gingerly.

Another couple of months have passed since we last pushed out a release, and so, in our ongoing efforts to produce the best media software in the world, it's time to squash another few of those more irritating bugs. Usual rules apply: don't expect any new features, don't think that this will change your life, it won't make you richer or more attractive, but it will hopefully be more stable and usable for people who've been victims of any of these bugs.

So, what have we done? Well, you can find a full summary of closed pull requests here, but the summary would be...

Data compression is the process of storing data in a format that uses less space than the original representation would use. Compressing data can be very useful particularly in the field of communications as it enables devices to transmit or store data in fewer bits. Besides reducing transmission bandwidth, compression increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive or other storage device.

There are 2 main types of compression. Lossy compression is a data encoding method which reduces a file by discarding certain information. When the file is uncompressed, not all of the original information will be recovered. Lossy compression is typically used to compress video, audio and images, as well as internet telephony. The fact that information is lost during compression will often be unnoticeable to most users. Lossy compression techniques are used in all DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and most multimedia available on the internet.

Images take up massive amounts of internet bandwidth because they often have large file sizes. They are the most popular resource type on the web. According to the HTTP Archive, 60% of the data transferred to fetch a web page is images composed of JPEGs, PNGs and GIFs. 45% of the images seen on sites crawled by HTTP Archive are JPEGs.

The team working on Total War: WARHAMMER II have put out a new development post about one of the free features being added in the next update and it sounds really fun.

Recently, The Hunter & The Beast expansion was announced that seems quite feature-filled but it's also coming alongside a big free update too. Part of this update is the inclusion of "hyper defensible" Forts for the free Mortal Empires campaign map that you get if you own both Total War: WARHAMMER games.

You've battled across the map in various locations but there's currently nothing quite like this.

Points here for a little originality and a beautiful style. The one-person studio Diax Game have announced their "2.5D" platformer OSK.

In OSK you play as a squirrel, climbing an ridiculously large tree to get away from the chaos of an apocalypse. You need to climb fast, avoid other animals and solve puzzles to stay alive as long as you can. Certainly an interesting idea and it actually looks quite good too.

I have to say, every new release of Vintage Story brings me closer to tapping that buy button as it's really starting to sound pretty sweet.

This survival game might look like Minecraft but it continues to add in a multitude of gameplay features and graphical enhancements to make it truly different. Just like this latest 1.10 update that's now been released after two Release Candidates.

A Setback for FOSS in the Public (War) Sector, CONNECT Interoperability Project Shifting to the Private Sector

The Department of Defense has not fully implemented mandates from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to increase its use of open-source software and release code, according to a September 10 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
The report notes that the 2018 NDAA mandated DoD establish a pilot program on open source and a report on the program’s implementation. It also says that OMB’s M-16-21 memorandum requires all agencies to release at least 20 percent of custom-developed code as open-source, with a metric for calculating program performance.
However, DoD has released less than 10 percent of its custom code, and had not developed a measure to calculate the performance of the pilot program. In comments to GAO, the DoD CIO’s office said there has been difficulty inventorying all of its custom source code across the department, and disagreement on how to assess the success for a performance measure. While the department worked to partially implement OMB’s policy, the department had not yet issued a policy.

The Defense Department has been slow to meet a government-wide mandate to release more open-source software code, as DOD officials have concerns about cybersecurity risks and are struggling to implement such a program across the department, according to a new audit.

The Department of Defense’s congressionally mandated efforts to create an open source software program aren’t going so well.
DOD must release at least 20 percent of its custom software as open source through a pilot required by a 2016 Office of Management and Budget directive and the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. Open source software, OMB says, can encourage collaboration, “reduce costs, streamline development, apply uniform standards, and ensure consistency in creating and delivering information.”

The Defense Department has been slow to meet a government-wide mandate to release more open-source software code, as DOD officials have concerns about cybersecurity risks and are struggling to implement such a program across the department, according to a new audit. Since 2016, DOD has been required by law to implement an open-source software pilot program in accordance with policy established by the Office of Management and Budget.

The CONNECT project, an open source project that aims to increase interoperability among organizations, is transitioning from federal stewardship to the private sector and will soon be available to everyone.
Developed ten years ago by a group of federal agencies in the Federal Health Architecture (FHA), CONNECT was a response to ONC’s original approach to a health information network. The agencies decided to build a joint health interoperability solution instead of having each agency develop its own custom solution, and they chose to make the project open source.

Linux VR Headset

Since most VR Headsets support Windows platforms today, there are very few options for Linux users. Despite its support, many people have faced troubles setting up and running their Headsets on Linux. However, not anymore. The VR gaming experience is now getting better!
The all-new Xrdesktop is an open-source development that lets you work with various desktop environments like GNOME and KDE. Since this project is under progress right now, we can hope for more features like Steam, Valve and other platforms for gaming and Virtual Reality experience.
In addition, the Xrdesktop will also offer integration with Windows as well. Once completed, it will be a great step towards traditional Linux desktop environments. The program is available for installation in both packages for Ubuntu Linux and Arch Linux.

An Easy Fix for a Stupid Mistake

I waited a long time for Mageia 7 and for OpenMandriva Lx 4. When both distros arrived, I was very happy.
But new distros bring changes, and sometimes it is not easy to adapt. Mageia 7 has been rock-solid: it is doing a great job in my laptop and both in my daughter's desktop and in mine. There is one thing, though. I have been avoiding a strange mesa update that wants to remove Steam.
OpenMandriva is also fantastic, but this new release provided options like rock, release, and rolling. When I first installed the distro, I chose rock because I was shying away from the rolling flavor. Eventually, I had to move to rolling because that was the only way in which I could manage to install Steam in both my laptop and desktop machines.